Art and science meet in my adventures in sketching astronomical objects. Here I detail my travels across Australia with my telescopes, and from home, the people I meet and the technical challenges I encounter. From our closest neighbour, the Moon, to the furthest galaxies. From the seemingly trivial to the mind bending complex. All is fair game for my sketch pad. And continuing the tradition of The Mellish Technique.

Moon

Friday, 23 January 2015

It is amazing how sometimes, while you may perceive a night
to be very good, the full quality of the night is not totally realised until
you examine an object you visited on another night. In this case, it was my first sighting of
Thor’s Helmet back in 2011.

That night I viewed Thor’s Helmet from inside a valley in
the middle of dairy country. There was a
lot of moisture in the air, and transparency fluctuated during the night. Then I thought I had pretty nice view of NGC
2359, and so inspired I was by the image I saw through my 17.5” scope I
sketched it. Later on back at home, I
examined photos of the Helmet, and was surprised to see how extensive the
nebulosity was, and how little of it I could see. All that changed four years later.

This new observation of the Helmet was such a
revelation! It taught me that even if
seeing is not the most stable, if transparency is excellent, you will still be
granted the most magnificent image quality if you keep the magnification
down. Oh my word! What a magnificent night we had.

Nebulosity extended out in four directions, two more than my
first view. So much more structure could
also be seen, and so many more stars.

This piece, and the one of M42, done on the same night are
for me my most satisfying. The
culmination of many years of viewing and sketching all came together to teach
me new things, just when I thought I had seen it all, sky quality wise. I night I will remember for a very long time.

Sunday, 18 January 2015

I was not expecting to be able to get to my customary dark
site this month. And as chance would
have it, the day that would have been best for such a sojourn was a splendid
one. Yet the hero of the moment is my
beautiful wife. I mentioned to her that
morning that this evening promised to be a spectacular one up at the
Mountians. The very next thing she says
to me is: “So why don’t you go.”
!!! You could have knocked me over with
a feather.

The two hour road trip gave hints to the quality of the
evening ahead. It is currently the
middle of the Australian summer.
Normally a hot and humid Sydney day like this day sees dreadful heat
haze and poor transparency. Yet this day
was the clearest I can remember! As I
approached the Airfield, Venus and Mercury greeted me on the western
horizon. When I arrived at the Airfield,
the quality of the night was set in concrete when my companions and myself
witnessed Mercury set with just the slightest twinkle. Best of all, we also saw Mercury flutter its
final night’s light through the very distant trees. A truly marvellous sight.

The transparency of the night was the best I can
remember. While seeing was challenged to
a maximum of 150X. Yet by keeping
magnification down, with the extraordinary transparency, the quality of the
image thrown up was just exquisite.

There was one main prize for the night, the celestial giant
M42. I’ve sketched M42 on several
occasions, but never from a dark site.
And this night’s special conditions revealed more detail, subtlety, and
extension of nebulosity than I have seen previously. After two hours I was beginning to think to
myself “Good grief! When is this going
to stop!”.

One of my favourite parts of this nebula is M42’s little
companion M43. Its somewhat spiral shape,
and faint streamers of material connecting the two is a delight to see and a
challenge to depict.

Friday, 2 January 2015

I had the opportunity of going bush with my son for a few
days between Christmas and New Year’s day.
We spent the day busy with trekking and helping out with farm
duties. So while each night was crystal
clear, only one night was practical to take out the telescope.

We had gone to an uncle’s property some 4 hours’ drive from
my home in Sydney, close to the tiny village of Hill End in New South
Wales. We were fortunate with the
weather too. In summer, the normal
maximum temperature here is over 36°C.
But the weather over these few days, the day time temperature was a very
comfortable 23° thanks to a strong dry wind.
This made for evenings that were stunningly clear. And the wind calmed down during the night, so made conditions even better.

I took my 100mm f/5 refractor, and a single eyepiece, an
Explore Scientific 30mm 82°, my favourite wide field combination. The one night I was able to use this little
refractor was the last one, New Year’s Eve.
With the Moon setting around 1:30am, after a few hours’ sleep I was greeted
with a magnificent sky. A friend had
made me aware that comet Lovejoy was in the constellation Lepus over these few
days. As it turns out, Lovejoy was a very
easy naked eye object to spot between β & ε Lep..

My first look at Lovejoy was sensational. The comet’s coma was so big and bright with
an intense nucleus. Then I spotted
something odd - a next to invisible tail!
I was not convinced on what I was seeing as every other sketch of
Lovejoy I had seen, including those with larger apertures than I was using,
showed no tail. I thought my eyes were
playing tricks on me. So I moved onto
other objects to consider sketching.
After an hour of indecision, I was drawn back to Lovejoy. Again, the tail became visible, and now I was
beginning to see structure within it.
Now I was convinced at what I was seeing. The tail was not uniform, with a sudden widening after a long even shaft of a tail coming off the coma.

It is curious how sometimes indecision can lead to an
unexpected outcome. And that so much
detail was visible using such a modest little telescope, and a nice eyepiece
can reveal. This sketch was most
satisfying for me. I was very contented
to have just the one sketch from this time away. And what a vista I was treated to at the very
end of the year!